When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano

| Tasha

When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano

When Green Becomes Tomatoes: Poems for All Seasons by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Julie Morstad (InfoSoup)

Move through the seasons in this book of superb poetry. Each season is captured in small moments. Spring is shown in a bird singing on a branch, a crocus in snow, gray skies, rain, and red rubber boots. It turns to summer with poems that show that transition. Summer then is swimming, grass, fireflies, tomatoes, stars, and blueberries. Fall glides in with promises of sweaters, leaves and pumpkins. A bare time leads to snow in winter, snuggling at the fireside, and again a bird on a branch singing in spring. Each poem here is a gem, a glimpse of a moment in a season that captures it so completely.

I know that there are so many books of seasonal poetry! Yet this is one that is worth buying and having and reading and handing to people. It is a book of poetry that is accessible and simple, yet one that speaks beyond what it is saying, just like blueberries are more than their color and the gray skies of spring speak beyond into pure emotion. It’s a book of poetry that invites you to see the world through Fogliano’s words and you realize you share that same world but could never have said it this way. Incredible.

Morstad’s illustrations are exactly what these poems needed. Her art is simple and yet incredibly beautiful. The colors have real depth to them, the grass is rich in green and yellows, the tomatoes plump with red juiciness, and the water invites readers to dive in too. The children on the pages are diverse in a way that is effortless and inclusive.

One of the best books of poetry I have read in a long time, this one is a seasonal treat too good to miss. Appropriate for ages 6-9.

Reviewed from copy received from Roaring Brook Press.

 

2016 Little Rebels Award Shortlist

| Tasha

The shortlist for the 2016 Little Rebels Award has been announced. The British award, now in its fourth year,  is for fiction that celebrates social justice and equality for ages birth to 12.

Here are shortlisted titles:

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain Gorilla Dawn

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne

Gorilla Dawn by Gill Lewis

I Am Henry Finch I'm a Girl!

I Am Henry Finch by Alexis Deacon, illustrated by Viviane Schwarz

I’m a Girl! by Yasmeen Ismail

The Little Bookshop and the Origami Army Uncle Gobb and the Dread Shed (Uncle Gobb 1)

The Little Bookshop and the Origami Army! by Michael Foreman

Uncle Gobb and the Dread Shed by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Neal Layton

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

| Tasha

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo (InfoSoup)

Released April 12, 2016.

The amazing Kate DiCamillo does it again with another winning novel for middle grade readers. Raymie has a plan to get her father to return to the family. If she can just win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire pageant, she knows she will have her picture in the paper and gain her father’s attention and he just might come back home. Her mother hasn’t been the same since he ran off with a dental hygienist. And that is why Raymie is attending baton twirling classes during the summer. But the classes aren’t going like Raymie had expected. One girl, Louisiana Elefante, has fainted and the other, Beverly Tapinski, is just out to sabotage the pageant, not win it. Then there is the matter of the pageant requiring them to do good deeds, something that is harder that one might expect. Soon an unlikely friendship springs up between the three girls, each facing their own form of abandonment and discovering their own ability to rescue themselves.

This book reads so beautifully. The language pulls you in, embraces you and you happily immerse yourself in the world that a master storyteller has built for you. It’s a world filled with three girls who are vibrantly human and each completely distinct from one another without using any tropes or stereotypes. In other words, it’s wildly refreshing to have three girls depicted as unique and very special.

And what a treat to also have a book about girls that is not also about boys and attraction even though it is about pageants. Instead this is a book about girl power in a way that is subtle and strikingly honest. The writing is clever and wonderfully witty with little moments that capture life whether it is today or in 1975.  It is a book that celebrates individuals and their own ability to make the world a better place just by being themselves, and also by trying to do a good deed every so often.

Brilliantly written with glorious girl characters, this novel is a summer treat from start to finish. Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from ARC received from Candlewick Press.

This Week’s Tweets, Pins & Tumbls

| Tasha

Here are the links I shared on my Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr accounts this week that I think are cool:

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Beverly Cleary, creator of Ramona Quimby, still going strong at 99

We Stories aims to get white families talking about race, racism through children’s books

16 Hilarious Signs That Prove Libraries Are the Greatest:

LIBRARIES

As libraries embrace maker rooms, are the poorest users being left behind?

British public library service faces ‘greatest crisis in its history’

For Adults, Lifelong Learning Happens The Old Fashioned Way

In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed

Libraries: The decline of a profession? – BBC News

Nintendo partners with SF public library to teach kids about game design

TEEN READS

 

Let It Snow – The Movie

| Tasha

Let It Snow

The Hollywood Reporter has the news that the film version of Let It Snow, a short story collection by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle will be directed by Luke Snellin. Film rights for the book were acquired by Universal.

 

Waiting for High Tide by Nikki McClure

| Tasha

Waiting for High Tide by Nikki McClure

Waiting for High Tide by Nikki McClure (InfoSoup)

On a summer day, a boy waits for high tide. He’d love to swim but he’d just get muddy or even stuck. The other animals on the seashore are waiting for high tide too, six long hours. But today is a special day, the boy and his family are going to build a raft. They found a big log and have cut it into three sections. The boy plays on the shore, finding treasures along the way including a pair of pink glasses with one eye covered in barnacles. They work hard on the raft as the water comes in closer and closer. When they stop for lunch, the boy sees birds eating too. The raft is finally ready but there is still time before high tide, so they eat cookies and wait. Finally the raft floats and there is time for jumping, swimming and enjoying the perfect summer day.

McClure proves here that she is as much a writer and poet as an artist. She writes with a depth that is lovely to see in a picture book, offering real insight into the natural world. She also writes with a childlike eye and attitude, drawing parallels between the human world and the natural one. There is an engaging mix of fonts in the text, some of the text large and capitalized in a way that conveys excitement and time passing. The passage of time is such a focus here as the tide slowly comes in. It is a book that celebrates slower times, lingering before enjoying the reward of your hard work.

As always McClure’s art is exceptional. Her cut paperwork is filled with details. The scene of the boy in the barnacle glasses as he explores the shoreline is filled with such tiny details that one can look for some time before you see the chipmunk peeking over the log or the five dollar bill. This is a book for spending some slow time of your own on.

Based on McClure’s own family, this picture book is a quiet look at nature and spending time outside. Appropriate for ages 6-8.

Reviewed from copy received from Abrams.

The Last Execution by Jesper Wung-Sung

| Tasha

The Last Execution by Jesper Wung Sung

The Last Execution by Jesper Wung-Sung (InfoSoup)

Originally published in Danish, this novel looks at the last 12 hours before a teen boy will be executed on Gallows Hill. The novel shows the approach the execution from the point of view of different members of the community and from the boy, Niels, himself. It opens the night before with Niels swinging out and trying to hit the devil but instead smashing his hand badly. He then has a fly he speaks with, who buzzes around him and Niels imagines himself having long conversations with it. There is the master carpenter in town who will measure Niels for his coffin. The master baker who looks to profit from the busyness that an execution brings to the market. A poet who pens his record of the events. A three-legged dog, who befriended the boy and now waits in the streets. A girl who has fed the boy before and even kissed him. And the executioner with the axe he has inherited.

Based on the last execution in Svendborg, Denmark in 1853, this novel takes a serious and haunting look at what could have brought a boy to the edge of execution and whether he deserves his fate. The entire book ticks closer and closer to the execution and the book offers little hope of reprieve at any point. As the hours pass, the full story of the boy and his father emerges. The desperate poverty they lived in together, working on farms for food and then walking to another farm looking for work. The dire illness of his father that led him to be unable to work some days and eventually die. The hope that starts to light Niels life just before a mistake takes it all away.

I appreciate so much that this is such a dark story. There are moments of hope that shine like sunbeams but they are for past hope, happening before Niels is in his cell. Once there, there is no hope. There is no reprieve for him and no promise of such is ever held out. It is a novel that moves on and on and on to the inevitable, something that could be stopped but now can only be witnessed and readers are forced to witness it along with those that thronged and judged.

Terrifying, moving and deeply poetic, this historical novel asks huge questions and leaves the answers to the reader. Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Reviewed from copy received from Atheneum.

Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt and Allison McGhee

| Tasha

Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt and Allison McGhee

Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt and Allison McGhee (InfoSoup)

Jules and Sylvie are sisters, just one year apart. They live with their father in a house that backs onto a woods with a river. There is one part, the Slip, where the girls are forbidden to go, since it’s so dangerous, where the river goes underground. When the girls awaken to late spring fresh snow, Sylvie just has to run down to the river to make a wish. Her wishes are always the same, to run faster. Jules is left behind at home after the two make their snowman family together. Jules waits and waits, but Sylvie does not return. That’s when Jules discovers that Sylvie has disappeared into the river. It’s also when a pregnant fox feels a spirit enter her female cub, a special spirit that has a connection to humans, specifically Jules. Two young females, a fox and a girl, both searching for what is missing and both unable to turn away from their shared bond.

Appelt and McGhee have written a blazingly beautiful novel that pairs adept writing with a powerful connection to nature. The book begins on a spring day filled with snow, a magical time. But even at the beginning there is foreshadowing that something is going to happen, there is the danger of the Slip, the speed of running, a certain desperation, a dead mother. It all adds up gracefully and powerfully to danger and then death. It’s the glorious writing that allows that to be both shocking and also entirely expected too.

The part of the story with the fox brings a richness to the story, another piece that falls into place of animals that have connections and even responsibilities. It too is written with a beauty and a combination of real understanding of foxes and wild animals and then also a haunting connection to death. The entire book also relies on its setting that is shown from human point of view and then again with different terms in the fox viewpoint as well. That element helps to sew the two halves of the book tightly together into a whole. A whole that sings about death, about loss, about grief, and about the power of nature to heal.

Incredibly moving and richly detailed, this novel is a powerful read. Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from copy received from Atheneum.

 

Spot, the Cat by Henry Cole

| Tasha

Spot the Cat by Henry Cole

Spot, the Cat by Henry Cole (InfoSoup)

In this wordless picture book, a cat named Spot heads out of an open window and into adventures in the city. The book is done in black and white illustrations with lots of fine details, perfect settings for a small spotted cat to get lost. It is up to the reader to find Spot on each page, something that can be challenging on some pages, even for adults. Spot visits areas throughout the city from a farmer’s market to a park filled with kites in the air. While he is adventuring though, his owner is looking for him, putting up lost cat posters around the neighborhood and missing him each time.

It is the art here that makes the book so enchanting. The details are so well done that as a reader I kept getting lost in what others on the page were doing. The world the cat and the boy explore on the page makes sense. It is all cohesive, filled with people going about their days in ways that read as natural and real. In other words, it’s a joy to read and explore the pages whether you are able to spot Spot or not.

A great seek-and-find book but also a great wordless picture book with a story too. Appropriate for ages 3-5.

Reviewed from copy received from Simon and Schuster.